surgery

Etymology

From Middle English surgerie, from Old French surgerie, from Latin chirurgia, from Ancient Greek χειρουργία (kheirourgía), from χείρ (kheír, “hand”) + ἔργον (érgon, “work”). Doublet of chirurgy.

noun

1. (medicine, usually uncountable) A procedure involving major incisions to remove, repair, or replace a part of a body.
   Surgery is often necessary to prevent cancer from spreading.
2. (medicine) The medical specialty related to the performance of surgical procedures.
3. A room or department where surgery is performed.
   The physician's proper place was in the library, not in the surgery. 2006, Philip Ball, The Devil's Doctor, Arrow, published 2007, page 51
4. (Britain) A doctor's office.
   I dropped in on the surgery as I was passing to show the doctor my hemorrhoids.
5. (Britain) Any arrangement where people arrive and wait for an interview with certain people, particularly a politician. cf. clinic.
   Our MP will be holding a surgery in the village hall on Tuesday.
6. (finance, bankruptcy, slang) A pre-packaged bankruptcy or "quick bankruptcy".
7. (topology) The production of a manifold by removing parts of one manifold and replacing them with corresponding parts of others.
8. (by extension, figurative) Drastic changes made to anything.
   The C# compiler evidently performs some major surgery on your code each time you use the await keyword. 2019, Ian Griffiths, Programming C# 8.0: Build Cloud, Web, and Desktop Applications, page 716